'Sharknado' took Twitter by storm, rankings show

Dawn C. Chmielewski

"Sharknado," Syfy's made-for-TV movie about a swirling cyclone of ocean predators, did indeed take Twitter by storm, according to the latest rankings of the week's most, er, chewed-over topics on social media.

SocialGuide, a Nielsen division that measures social-media activity related to TV shows, ranked "Sharknado" as the most-discussed program of the night -- with some 318,232 tweets -- during its Thursday airing. That's more than CBS' reality series, "Big Brother," the Kansas City Royals vs. New York Yankees baseball game, or MTV reality series "Girl Code."

About halfway through the movie, Twitter conversation peaked at more than 5,000 Tweets per minute, according to the social media site. By midnight, once the televised tornado epic had blown over, tweets subsided to 500 tweets per minute, Twitter reported.

The novelty of discussing the campy title (and suggesting alternative B-movie concepts, including "Sharktopus" and "Dinoshark") had clearly worn out by the weekend. On Sunday, Twitter registered only about 20,000 "Sharknado"-related Tweets.

The most-social TV shows for the seven days that ended Sunday, as ranked by SocialGuide, are as follows: